How to cite a Kindle ebook

If you’re writing an academic paper and need to cite a Kindle book, you’ll quickly notice a problem: there are no pages, and therefore no page numbers. The wrong approach is to complain about the device for not being a printed book; the better approach is to figure out how to make it work for your research, so you can take advantage of ebooks now instead of waiting for academia to catch up.

“If a book is available in more than one format, cite the version you consulted. For books consulted online, list a URL; include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline. If no fixed page numbers are available, you can include a section title or a chapter or other number.”

For the reference list entry, you’ll need to include the type of e-book version you read (two examples are the Kindle DX version and the Adobe Digital Editions version). In lieu of publisher information, include the book’s DOI or where you downloaded the e-book from (if there is no DOI). For example:

To cite in text [when page numbers don't exist], either (a) paraphrase, thus avoiding the problem (e.g., “Gladwell, 2008″), or (b) utilize APA’s guidelines for direct quotations of online material without pagination (see Section 6.05 of the manual). Name the major sections (chapter, section, and paragraph number; abbreviate if titles are long), like you would do if you were citing the Bible or Shakespeare:

One of the author’s main points is that “people don’t rise from nothing” (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1, Section 2, para. 5).

When citing eBooks, you should [follow] the guidelines for citing nonperiodical web publications, found in section 5.6.2c (pp. 197-189) of the MLA Handbook:

Author’s Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, copyright date. Source of eBook. Web. Date of Access.

How to get around a ban on citing ebooks

Some professors might refuse to allow ebooks in citations, either because they’re being mulish or because they want everyone to use the same (print) edition for convenience’s sake. If that’s the case, you can use one of the following methods to convert a Kindle location to a print edition’s equivalent page number. (The first two come from this Kindleboards discussion.)

(The less precise way.) Convert your current location into a percentage of the book, and multiply that by the total page numbers of the print edition. For example:

Book has 300 locations and you’re at 200; divide 200 by 300 to get .67, or 67%.

Find print version on Amazon or another bookstore and look for total pages.

Multiply total pages by the percentage; if the print book is 250 pages, then: 250 * .67 = 167.5, or pages 167-168.

Use with caution, as this will pretty much never give you the exact page number.

(The more precise way.) Find a unique phrase in the text that’s very near the section you want to reference. Now go to Google Books or Amazon and search inside the book for that phrase, and you’ll usually be able to find the exact page number you need.

(The lazy way.) Use this form. It should provide a fairly accurate estimation, and can also be used to convert page number to location.

Just remember that no matter which approach you take, you need to make sure you’re not referencing a different edition, since the content may have changed considerably.

@Hayley: Personally, I prefer the Chicago Manual of Style approach over the APA, which means I would just write “Kindle edition” and leave off the reference to the specific platform. My reasoning is regardless of which Kindle app you use, you’re still accessing the exact same file with the same location numbers, so “Kindle edition” will suffice.

By Tamara Peyton February 6, 2011 - 8:44 PM

Hayley it doesn’t matter which Kindle version you use to reference an ebook. Just as you don’t say which browser you used to look at a website. The Kindle is the version, it doesn’t matter if it is Kindle Desktop, Kindle DX, Kindle for IpAd, etc.

The problem arises not with citations and referencing, but with quotation. Because you cannot give a fixed reference to a page or paragraph (as the paragraph and locator will change based on the font size someone uses, the best you can do, as suggested here, would be to use a percentage. Kindle gives you this percentage by default. This is how I do it and it works well for me so far.

By Johnny Alvarez May 20, 2011 - 4:34 AM

There is actually a way to find the page number. If you press the menu button on your ebook, you press go to and it list the number of pages. While it doesnt show page numbers exactly you can more or less guess and see if you are right at least more exact this way.\

By Nonette G. Tsang November 6, 2011 - 8:44 AM

Thanks, Johnny! This post was written before the recent Kindle update that introduced page numbers, when there was no way to do that. It’s probably not as useful now to people with the most current Kindle software, although Amazon doesn’t provide “real page numbers” for all ebooks, so at least sometimes you’ll still have to do it the hard way.

By Joe November 15, 2011 - 5:59 PM

[...] zero idea how to cite quotations. The best source I could find for how to cite a Kindle ebook was this website which said to reference sections. I’m still figuring out how to figure out what section [...]

By Judith Abbott March 27, 2012 - 10:17 AM

Professors aren’t just being mulish about this, unfortunately. The basic purpose of a footnote is to allow readers to find the passage for themselves for any one of a number of purposes (my students thought of nine or ten when I asked). I just spent (wasted) half an hour trying to find a Kindle citation from a master’s thesis. One of our responsibilities is to check those footnotes. I failed. So I sure hope Amazon comes up with an actual-page indicator soon.

Without sounding too cavalier (I hope), it seems to me like the author of the thesis failed, not you. Kindle location numbers are absolute, regardless of whether you access a Kindle edition on a Kindle device or through one of Amazon’s apps, so at minimum the thesis author should have simply provided a location number. Then you could have told your Amazon device/software to go directly to that location number.

Amazon now adds “real” page numbers to its more popular and recent editions, which can solve a lot of these citation problems. But when there’s still no traditional page number, I think it would be helpful (or “not mulish,” ha ha) if professors would accept Kindle location numbers instead of demanding a print page analogue. If we accept that a Kindle edition is a real edition–which maybe isn’t technically true, but for practical purposes it is–then Kindle location numbers *are* equivalent to page numbers in any other edition.

[edit:]

…and I just realized that you probably meant you tried to find the Kindle equivalent in a printed edition, which is why you commented that it’s not mulish to demand printed page numbers. I misread it (I think) and assumed you were trying to find a location in a Kindle text. Sorry about that! In defense of your teaching/grading strategies, I *do* mention that some professors might require specific editions for citation purposes for the sake of convenience, not because they’re anti-ebook. But in those cases, I think it’s the student’s responsibility to figure out the correct print page analogue.

By Jason Archuleta September 30, 2012 - 1:07 AM

I am in the second year of my M.A. program. I have not had a professor that did not like kindle locations until this semester. I used the “The more precise way” and it worked like a charm. I should have thought of it myself as I often use google books.

I am of the opinion that the kindle edition needs to be recognized as a proper edition. If anyone would like to fine the exact location, they need only buy the kindle version of the book and use the kindle PC software to find the exact location with more precision then a page number. If they do not want to purchase the book, they can use a tool such as http://www.bookmonk.com/labs/numbers.php to find the approximate page number. This is not much different from hardback/paperback differences.

By sue December 2, 2012 - 6:19 AM

I have been on the receiving end of this but now I have to write a paper and I have an ebook. This is horrible. Your prof will not like ebooks because they are crazy but because they cannot verify the information in the paper, esp. if the student has problems with their writing/knowledge. As a student this is equally disturbing. Kindle should have really thought about this before entering the academic book market. Last time I bought a kindle book I suppose.

I downloaded a copy of Ceasar’s Commentaries from Amazon Kindle. I read the work on both my iPhone and Iconia android tablets, both using Kindle reader and synched with each other. It was not too long before I noticed that the pagination of the text was slightly different on each. It’s not very far off and it may not affect location numbers, but I thought FYI that I would mention it. I am no longer in school, but if I was I would always use a printed book for any paper. Another good reason to start working on the paper as early in the semester as possible!

By Bob Saget July 14, 2013 - 9:24 PM

MLA guide REALLY needs to just accept % numbers. I think the mediums have determined how page numbers are to be handled now, and I would not be surprised if they eventually just went away and everything was % or progress indicators. I am surprise MLA says to reference another section of their book rather than just allowing a correctly formatted % for citations. Like (Author Name %) = Example: (Smith 15%).